A conversation about coal

Over the course of the last couple of weeks, we’ve had coffee and talked with a few folks in the community.

And every time, when the topic of conversation has turned to coal, blood begins to boil. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the person is in favor of coal mining or opposed, it’s a hot-button issue.

And we think we understand why.

When a new grocery store, gas station, restaurant or construction business opens shop in the Mat-Su Valley, we have a pretty good idea of what the impacts and benefits to the community will be.

But when a coal mining operation considers opening a pit mine in the area, the conversation changes.

From other communities, states’ and nations’ experience we know what coal can mean. We know its reputation.

Some say that reputation is as a good neighbor. Some say coal mines provide family wage jobs. Some say mining as it would be done here does not pose risks to the land, animals or people.

But not everyone agrees.

Others say coal mining has a long and storied history. They say this mine isn’t so different from other mines in other areas and that the impacts experienced in those communities will be experienced here, too. They say there are health risks and risks to the water, land and animals.

What one side says is “fact” the other side says is fiction.

A national news outlet even featured our local conversation about coal in its pages and described the tone as racist. Property has been damaged. Businesses have been boycotted. Neighbors have become enemies. And sometimes the divide is within families, too.

More than coal itself, we are concerned about our community and how this conversation is turning neighbors into enemies.

While we’re not neurobiologists or brain experts of any kind, we’re still going to talk a bit about the three parts of the brain and why fear is not the basis for good decision-making at the personal, state or national levels.

No one makes good decisions out of fear because while the reptilian system of our brain is geared to deal with fear, it does not perform logic or formal thinking operations. Those functions of the brain are performed by the cerebral cortex. And while all three — reptilian system, limbic system and cerebral cortex — portions of the brain interact, each layer of the brain is specially geared toward specific functions.

Times were hard too in 1933 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his first inaugural address. “…Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

We think shifting this conversation from the reptilian portion of the brain to the cerebral level is in the best interest of our community.

To that end, we ask our neighbors to weigh in on the idea of a community gathering — ice cream social or coffee talk, maybe — where we can have a conversation about coal that engages our cerebral cortex and leaves out our reptilian systems. Ground rules would require civility and some basic agreed upon “facts” would be established in advance. While a civil conversation is our goal, we do hope it might yield new common ground and begin to mend damaged fences.

Tell us what you think in the reader comment section online at frontiersman.com, send us an email at news@frontiersman.com or call 352-2268.